You've certainly submitted it in the right place this time. As I think you've noticed now, official submissions will tell you your place in line.

Before I start, I want to say that this critique may sting quite a bit. There are a lot of issues and problems, but I cannot stress enough that this is a part of the learning process. As much as Drawabox focuses on teaching people skills and exercises, it's also about developing a certain kind of discipline, a certain mindset towards learning that we are not born with. Some people may go through their entire lives excelling in certain areas, and enduring all kinds of challenges, but if they are not required to learn in this manner, it can still be a big mountain to climb. You've had trouble with this, but it is not just you - plenty of people do, and sometimes it takes the issues to be laid out clearly in front of you in order to overcome them.

So I looked back at the critique you'd received for your box challenge, and I noticed that sluggydragon noted correctly that you had a tendency to rush through your linework quite a bit. I think that is still something that you are struggling with quite a bit, and it is by far the biggest hurdle you have to overcome. I will point this out numerous times throughout this critique. Before we get to that however, students do sometimes have different impressions on how long they're expected to spend on each lesson, on each exercise, and frankly to each and every mark they draw. Sometimes students expect that they should be able to move through the work at a rather quick pace, and if they feel they're taking too much time, they may be more inclined to speed things up.

There is absolutely no timeline, no deadline, no expectation imposed upon you for how long these exercises should be taking you - and you should not be imposing any such thing on yourself. While it's true that there is a 2 week wait in between submissions, but while this is in part to avoid getting overwhelmed by people seeking feedback, it is also so students are forced to take their time. 2 weeks is a minimum, and many students will require much longer than this just to invest the appropriate amount of time into every aspect of the exercises - and this includes reading the instructions.

In order to help those who may be imposing unrealistic expectations upon themselves, I've been having my girlfriend steadily work through the course and livestream/record every single reading and exercise in real-time. You can see her work through the lessons on her YouTube channel. You'll see that she invests hours into each individual exercise, ensuring that every mark is executed using the ghosting method in order to execute confident, smooth strokes that still maintain proper control and accuracy. That is also what is expected of you.

With that, let's get into looking at your exercises.

Starting with your organic arrows, these are actually done fairly well. The lines are drawn fairly confidently, and flow well across the page. One issue that I am noticing however is that they're moving largely across the two dimensions of the page. When doing this exercise in the future, try thinking about how the arrows move through the depth of the scene as well - from a point farther away to a point closer. This means applying perspective to them.

I can see that you are in some cases making the width of the ribbon narrower to show that it moves farther away - this compression of space also should be applying to the distances between the zigzagging sections however, as perspective applies both to the size of objects as well as the distances between them. As we look farther back, the gaps between those sections will get smaller and smaller, eventually overlapping to show the depth of the scene.

Moving onto your organic forms with contour ellipses, you are clearly putting effort into focusing on simple sausage forms (as explained in the instructions). There are some issues where the ends of your sausages get a little stretched out (so they're no longer spherical). Continue to keep an eye on that.

Now, your actual ellipses have issues. To start, you're not drawing through your ellipses as you should be for each and every ellipse you draw throughout all of these lessons. You should also be applying the ghosting method to these (and to every mark you draw) in order to improve your control/accuracy while maintaining a mark free from hesitation. This will help you get the ellipses to fit snugly between the edges of the sausage form, in order to properly sell the illusion that the lines are actually running along the surface of this three dimensional form. Having them float loosely within it, or stick outside of the sausage's silhouette breaks this illusion a fair bit.

For your contour curves, the ghosting method will also help you to draw the curves with more confidence, as yours are currently quite stiff. When you draw them, because the curves are difficult, you hesitate as you draw them, resulting in a wobbling line as you try and steer it with your eyes. Using the ghosting method will force you to execute each mark with confidence, without steering it, but instead trusting in your muscle memory. A confident execution is of course going to impede your control and accuracy, so that's where the planning and preparation phases of the ghosting method apply as well.

Remember that you're expected to be practicing these exercises (the ghosting, the ellipses, everything from Lesson 1) as part of regular warmups as described back in Lesson 0. So you should be continually practicing these skills, and I'm not sure your work suggests that you have been.

One last thing to keep in mind about the contour ellipses and contour curves (although at this point I'm really laying on a lot of things for you to work on) is the fact that the degree of your ellipses - that is, their width - will change along the length of the form. As you slide over the sausage form, the degree will get wider or narrower. As shown here, the degree of the ellipse is based on the orientation of that cross-section relative to the viewer. At different positions in space, this changes.

Moving onto your texture analyses, you certainly made an effort to observe your reference images closely in the left side of this exercise, but the density gradients (on the right side) are basically non-existent. There's not a lot there to critique, since not much of an attempt was made, which leaves me with nothing to really work off. I will however mention that overall your linework is very scratchy. Looking more closely at your linework, the fact that it is actually quite reflective against the light suggests to me that you're possibly working in ballpoint pen. While Lesson 1 and the 250 box challenge can be done using a ballpoint pen in a pinch, Lesson 2 onward should be done using fineliners as explained back in Lesson 0. Texture especially is where this type of pen is important.

If you are using a fineliner, then excuse me for saying that. It's not always easy to identify the difference, but the scratchiness of your lines and the way the light reflects off the ink (fineliners dry matte, but the lighting scheme make it appear more reflective than it is) are all I have to go off.

Anyway, the scratchiness of your lines suggests that you're not employing the principles covered back in Lesson 1.

Throughout your dissection work, you don't seem to employ any of the principles about using cast shadows to imply your textural forms. You focus entirely on working in line rather than shadow shapes, and you pretty consistently outline each of your textural forms, rather than employing any of the concepts of implicit texture. This is what we were to explore in the texture analysis exercise, specifically in the density gradient that you didn't really attempt.

Moving onto your form intersections, while your box constructions have some issues (if we were to extend your sets of parallell lines, we'd see that they don't converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points) your linework is actually much better here than it has been elsewhere. It's not perfect, but while there are concerns with under/overshooting, your strokes are at least fairly smooth and I'm seeing signs that you're applying the ghosting method here. The quality of your linework dips again when you start introducing other forms - even the straight lines you were doing okay at previously suffer. This tells me that as the problem at hand gets more complex, you may have a tendency to panic a little and to put less effort in the things you know how to do, resulting in weaker results where you should at least have some confidence.

This is normal behaviour for a beginner, but it's all a matter of how you respond to challenges and being able to control that. Every single thing you do is a choice, and every choice results in an action. The choice to focus on executing a single line between two points with care, using the steps of the ghosting method. The choice to just put a few seconds into that stroke because you have bigger fish to fry and don't want to be here all day. These are all choices you make, and it is up to you to take control of them. A line, regardless of how complex the drawing it is a part of, is always just a line. When you're drawing a box, you need to only think about drawing that one line, and consider how it needs to be oriented in order to converge consistently with the other lines of its set. Focus on one task, on one simple task, and do it because you know you can do it well. Leave the next line for later.

It doesn't look like you've made any attempts at the actual intersections between the forms in this exercise. This aspect of the lesson - the intersection lines - is just something I'm introducing students to at this stage, as it is the tip of the ice berg of spatial relationships which we will continue to develop and explore throughout the entirety of this course. I do however need students to actually make the attempt now, in order to get their brains to start processing what it means for forms to exist in 3D space, and to interpenetrate one another, to connect and relate to one another in more than just the flat space of the page.

Lastly, your organic intersections are actually a decent start. Your linework is still wobbly, and you seem to be pretty selective in where you actually place your cast shadows (you have some parts of forms casting shadows, but other areas not casting shadows at all), you are doing a pretty decent job of capturing how the forms wrap around one another in 3D space. You've done a good job of selling their interactions as being three dimensional, rather than just being flat shapes pasted on top of one another on a page.

Conclusion

I mentioned this at the start, but I'll state it again. Drawabox is more than just a course that pushes students to learn skills directly related to drawing - it is also an opportunity for students to get accustomed to the frame of mind, and the discipline required to learn a skill. Students aren't necessarily required to start out with that discipline, and I feel that as it stands, you are still on your way to developing it. Because of this, you are not necessarily approaching the lectures, the instructions, and the exercises with the kind of focus and patience that it requires of you.

I've outlined a number of critical issues in your approach here, and with these in mind I want you to make another attempt at this lesson. While I have mentioned to you in the past that revision work can be submitted as a reply to the critique, in this case you will need another full critique of your work, and as such I will want you to submit it as a fresh one (you will be charged an additional credit). This is because of the time that has been invested into this critique has been significant, and further revision critiques would push well beyond the value of the credit that was spent on it.

When tackling this lesson again, keep the following in mind:

• The ghosting method should be applied to every single mark you draw, without exception.

• The ghosting method involves investing all of your time into the planning and preparation phases, followed by an execution with a confident stroke free from any hesitation.

• You need to draw through all of your ellipses, as explained back in Lesson 1.

• The exercises from Lesson 1 are all meant to be incorporated into a regular warmup routine, picking two or three at the beginning of each sitting to do for 10-15 minutes before moving onto that session's work. This is in order to continue developing your ability to execute the relevant techniques, and to keep those skills sharp.

• These lessons are dense. There's no other way to put it - there's so much information there that it's virtually impossible to convey it all in a way that it can be absorbed by any normal human in a single read-through. This is likely why you're missing and forgetting things from the instructions. It's not that you're not capable of processing all that's there, it's just that it will take several read-throughs to do so. By both watching the videos and reading the notes, you'll run into a great deal of repetition, but it is that repetition that will help you remember what you need to be focusing on.

• Reread all of the lesson notes and rewatch the videos - approach this as though you're coming to it fresh.

• I strongly recommend that you follow along with ScyllaStew's Videos for each of these lectures and exercises. This will ensure that you're pacing yourself in a patient manner that allows you to invest as much time as you need into each and every stroke. She's not quite through the texture section just yet, but those videos should go up in the next couple weeks. For now, at least the organic arrows and contour lines videos should help you establish a more acceptable pacing.

I can completely understand that reading through this critique may make you feel like the efforts you've put into completing the work have been discounted. I don't mean to say that you haven't worked hard - you have indeed worked hard, but the standards and expectations that you currently have are causing you to work in a manner that is less efficient than it could be. The time we invest now may seem considerable and inordinate, but investing it now will save us considerably in the long run.